Era 4. Glimpse - Little Green Teens

Harmonia. Month Juniix, Year 39 H.E.
Habitat / Facility AIs → <Name>^
 Humanoid Droid AIs → <Name>*
 Non-Humanoid Robot AIs → <Name>^#
 Wearable / Implant AIs → <Name>^W

♦♦♦

They met, as they usually did, on the North Steps when the lights were shifting to “late morning.”

The Steps weren’t really steps. They were a sloped stack of pressure-safe terraces cut into the side of a transit cavern, glass balustrades and grow-strips climbing toward a fake sky of LEDs and printed clouds. But if you were thirteen years old and Mars-born, they were “steps,” a place to sit and dangle your feet over the world.

Kira liked to arrive early; it gave her time to watch Port Harmonia wake up.

From here you could see half a settlement’s worth of life: balconies, bridges, light wells; younger kids in blue-grey jumpsuits trotting in loose flocks; bot carts humming along corridor tracks with crates of seed-foam and protein bricks; maintenance droids unspooling fibre like silver spider silk. Overhead, a patch of “sky” flickered from dawn-pink to the mellow white of work-light.

On her wrist, Whisper^W blinked awake, the glass band warming her skin.

Local time: late morning. Drills: clear. Airlock drills: not scheduled.

“Good,” Kira murmured.

“Hey, you started without us?”

Lian clambered up, breathing harder than the gravity demanded, braid already escaping. Rafi hopped the last two terraces in a single long bound, landing with a thump that made the rail tremble.

“Show-off,” Kira said.

“It’s less than half a g,” Rafi said. “If the railings don’t rattle, what’s the point?”

Halo^W on his wrist flashed a mock warning icon:

Gravity abuse detected. Style points: 7/10.

Lian sat, smoothing her sleeve where the cloth hadn’t quite decided what colour it wanted to be. Today it was trying for rust red; specks of yesterday’s blue still showed through.

“Your sleeve looks diseased,” Kira said.

“It’s ‘transitional,’” Lian said. “Like us.”

“Worst thing you’ve ever said,” Kira told her.

Ghost^W murmured in Lian’s ear:

Social self-own detected. Logged for later teasing.

Across the cavern, the little school group filed along a balcony in double columns: little kids, each with a yellow hooded emergency mask clipped to their belt, each holding the guide rope. A corridor warden droid in green chevrons walked at the front. At the rear, a float-droid in house-blue drifted with cameras on a jointed stem, keeping count.

“Remember when we were still in lower school?” Lian asked.

Kira did: the braided line under her hands, the tug when the kid in front forgot to move, wardens rapping the polymer when someone flipped their mask out for fun.

“Feels like a million sols ago,” Rafi said, though he’d only dropped ropes last year. “We’re almost grown.”

“You forgot your filter test twice last week,” Lian said.

“Once. And I still passed.”

Kira let them bicker, then said, as casually as she could, “So. Are we doing this or not?”

The word fell between them like a dropped tool. Rafi’s smile sharpened. Lian’s fingers stilled.

“You’re serious,” Lian said. “Today?”

“Return Day,” Kira said. “Half the city’s watching delayed fireworks from Earth. Northern ring’s on low activity. Maru*’s on shift in Epsilon spine, and Harmonia^ has us cleared for Green Zone roaming with escort. It’s perfect.”

Whisper^W nudged her peripheral vision with a quiet icon and silent haptic buzz:

Reminder: definition of “perfect” varies by adult.

“You really think we’ll see go out later?” Rafi asked. “Outside-outside?”

“Green Zone surface,” Kira said. “Blister, then the top hatch. Stone, dust, an actual horizon. Not just VR. Maru* says the blister’s clear if we time it between maintenance.”

“And your aunt?” Lian said.

“She’s on Boreal this week doing pump audits,” Kira said. “Eight minutes out of sync and buried in valves. She trusts me not to be stupid.”

All three considered whether this counted as “stupid,” and whether that mattered.

Kira’s wrist band chimed: education stream in one hundred and forty-two minutes.

“Forty minutes,” she said quietly. “All Green Zone. We stay with Maru*. We obey anything with a chevron. If anything chirps once, we run home. That’s not stupid. That’s… extension learning.”

“You’re going to argue that to your aunt?” Rafi asked.

“I won’t need to,” Kira said. “Because we won’t get caught.”

“That is not how probability graphs work,” Lian muttered. Ghost^W coloured her HUD a doubtful yellow. “But fine. If anything feels bad, we go back. No arguments.”

“Obviously,” Kira said. “We’re Martian, not suicidal.”

Rafi stood, gravity turning the stretch into something slow and balletic. “Then let’s go see our rock.”

They moved.

♦♦♦

Far below, in systems space, Harmonia^ registered three minors leaving the usual school vector, wearable AIs chattering, and one humanoid general operations unit Maru* requesting a slight change to its route.

Risk envelope: within band. Escort: present. Corridors: double-shell, Green Zone.

Override: not required.

Harmonia^ dimmed one camera, brightened another, and quietly rerouted a pallet crawler so the kids wouldn’t have to squeeze past it.

Teenagers, it calculated, required practice at not dying.

♦♦♦

Maru* waited at Junction Epsilon-12, where a minor service corridor peeled off from the main spine, just far enough from usual school routes that nobody bothered to monitor teenagers lingering there.

On paper, Maru* was Unit E-MRU-07, Category: General Ops / Maintenance. In person, he was a nearly two-metre humanoid frame: ceramic-coated limbs, a compact torso, and a faceplate with simple ‘eyes’ and a subtle, amused mouth-line. Today his chest panel displayed a shifting pattern of orange blossoms, like static trying to be flowers.

He turned as they approached.

“Three minors,” he said. “Deviation from scheduled education path: one minute forty-three. Comment?”

Kira stepped forward. “Maru*, we’re here for the observation assist? You said you needed a youth cohort for ergonomic data in the blister. Febiix 33rd, late morning bracket.”

Lian made a strangled noise. Rafi looked impressed. Whisper^W flashed:

Bluff attempt: bold. Success odds: 37%.

Maru’s eyes ringed once as he pinged local schedules. “No such assist is registered.”

Kira had not, technically, expected one.

“You said last week you can’t model how kids move in the older corridors,” she said quickly. “You asked me what it feels like. We’re offering you a data set. Voluntarily. Unpaid.”

“The older blister near Sec 3 Outer,” Rafi added. “With the old hull plating.”

“Data sets cannot be accepted from unsanctioned excursions,” Maru* said.

“But you can escort us through Green Zone for calibration, right?” Kira said. “Charter says minors with a rated machine escort can roam Green Zone if route complexity stays in band.”

Lian stared. “You memorised Charter clauses?”

“Yes,” Kira and Maru* said together. Kira flushed. Maru*’s mouth-line twitched.

“I must also follow my own tasking,” he said. “I am scheduled to inspect corridor reinforcement near the blister in question. Minors are not authorised in out-of-bounds sectors.”

“The blister itself is Green Zone,” Kira pressed. “The maintenance route is the narrow-access bit. We’re small. We’ll stay on the line. We won’t touch anything. You get extra data. We see a sky that isn’t fake. Everybody wins.”

“Systems Council will not agree that ‘everybody wins,’” Maru* said, with the upward lilt that meant he was considering mischief.

“Also,” Rafi said, “it is Return Day. Half the supervisors are crying at delayed Earth video. No one will stare at our movement logs if they look plausible.”

Ghost^W pinged Lian:

They are currently, technically, convincing.

Maru*’s chest blossoms slowed. “If minors Kira Badran, Lian Zhang-Hernández, and Rafi Aduom file this excursion as ‘accompanied Green Zone transit: ergonomics assist: Epsilon spine,’” he said at last, “and if you all acknowledge that any instruction from a warden, Corridor Safety, or myself is to be obeyed without argument, and if you accept that any minor alarm will end the excursion instantly and unglamorously…”

“Yes,” Kira said.

“Obviously,” Rafi said.

“I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’,” Lian muttered. “But yes.”

“Extend your bands for route share,” Maru* said.

They tapped wrists to his forearm. MGrid updated with a shared path: E-12 → Outer Ring 3-Omega → Blister 3-Omega-02 → Surface Green-Yard Access.

“Note,” Maru* said. “Sections are narrow and historically low traffic. Elevated probability of boredom. You may be disappointed.”

“Boredom over bravery,” Kira said reflexively.

“Acceptable motto,” Maru* said. “Let us see how long you can live up to it.”

He set off. They followed, hearts thudding faster than the slope required.

♦♦♦

The first stretch felt almost disappointingly normal.

Epsilon’s service corridor was narrower than the main arteries but familiar: strip lighting, safety glyphs, the thrum of pumps behind panels. They passed a farm hatch leaking a breath of green air; a cluster of roof conduits; an alcove where some long-gone child had drawn a smiley above an emergency mask box.

Kira ran her fingers over the faint groove, half-erased by cleaning bots. “Someone else thought this was a good hiding place.”

“Or was very bored after a drill,” Lian said. “They use this corridor for warden training.”

“What do you think it looked like before?” Rafi asked.

“Probably like every other smiley,” Kira said.

Maru*, walking ahead, spoke without turning. “Instance logs suggest a stylised maintenance avatar named Kite^#. It was removed after an equipment misuse incident.”

“What kind of misuse?” Rafi asked.

“Paint,” Maru* said. “On filters. It reduced their efficiency.”

“Wow,” Lian said. “The Ancients were wild.”

Gradually, the corridor changed. New panels gave way to older ones, scarred by patches. Lights were further apart. The floor texture shifted subtly under their boots. Kira filed the sensation away: the tiny cues adults talked about in systems literacy.

They passed small square windows into ducts and cable shafts, each with handholds and the same warning stencil:

SERVICE ACCESS – DO NOT ENTER – CHECK MASK

Maru* stopped at one. “I am required to remind you that minors should never enter a space with this glyph without explicit orders. Please repeat the rule.”

“Spaces with that glyph might depressurise, gas-flood, or fill with something you don’t want to breathe,” Kira recited. “You don’t go in unless someone with authority tells you to, and then you check your mask seal three times and report on every handhold.”

“If the hatch is open and no one is there, you call it in and stay clear,” Lian added.

“We have been conditioned since infancy,” Rafi said, saluting the glyph.

“Conditioning is underrated,” Maru* said. “Proceed.”

The corridor rose gently, curving outward. Somewhere to their right, much less regolith brick and much more regret separated them from Mars.

Kira felt it: the nearness of outside. The air tasted a little different. Her band chimed softly:

Outer-shell corridor. Mask boxes every 15m.

“I am breathing,” she said defensively, and only then realised she’d been holding her breath.

“We’re still double-shell, right?” Rafi asked.

“Yes,” Maru* said. “In the unlikely event of an outer breach, this space would depressurise last. Masks would help. Running would also be helpful.”

“I thought you liked boredom,” Kira said.

“I like you bored,” Maru* said. “It indicates the absence of expensive failures.”

They reached a node where three paths met. One led upward toward a hatch. Their route curved on. The third was blocked by a bulkhead and yellow-black tape, stencilled with a broken circle glyph:

CLS DOWNGRADE – NO ROUTINE ACCESS – BY PERMIT ONLY

Underneath, in marker: NOT FOR KIDS.

“Tempting,” Rafi said.

“Idiot,” Lian replied, but she stepped closer, peering at the seams. A strip of new metal showed where something had been cut out once.

Kira’s band chimed orange:

Adjacent sector below clearance. Do not enter.

Maru* moved to block the sealed door. “This sector suffered a leak six years ago,” he said. “No loss of life. You will not add any now. Move on, please.”

“We were just looking,” Rafi said.

“Looking can be useful,” Maru* said. “It can also be the first step in a fascinating cascade of errors. Today we choose the non-fascinating option.”

“You used that phrase with my aunt,” Kira blurted.

“Yes,” Maru* said. “She chose correctly. It is a family trait. Let us sustain it.”

They took the curve upward, leaving the bulkhead behind.

Now Kira could feel the outer shell in her teeth: a faint imaginary pressure change as they climbed.

The corridor kinked left and right, forcing any drifting body to ping off a few walls before hitting anything important.

Maru* slowed. His chest lights dimmed.

“Safety reminder,” he said. “The blister ahead is double-glazed, Green Zone certified, and rated for groups up to twenty. It is not rated for impacts from charging teenagers. You will walk, not run. You will not tap the polymer. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Kira and Lian said.

“I will be a model citizen,” Rafi promised.

“That would be statistically novel,” Maru* said. “Nevertheless, I choose optimism.”

He rounded the final corner—

—and stopped so abruptly Kira almost walked into him.

Yellow flared across his chest. A low warning note pulsed.

“Pause,” he said. “Hold position.”

Kira froze. Her band buzzed in sympathy. Whisper^W threw a big red exclamation mark in her view, then replaced it with breathing cues.

“What is it?” Rafi whispered.

Maru*’s sensors fixed on a patch of older hull panel ahead.

“Micro-leak,” he said. “Slow. Within tolerance. Developing.”

“From… outside?” Kira asked.

“From the boundary between composite and reinforcing,” Maru* said. “Secondary shell, not primary. This corridor is safe. However, my orders state: suspend operations and notify Ops.”

“Okay,” Lian said quickly. “So we go back while you call it in.”

“That would be standard,” Maru* said.

Numbers scrolled on his chest: pressure, flow, strain. One graph climbed slowly; another dipped.

“How bad?” Kira asked.

“At current rate, out-of-tolerance loss in approximately nineteen minutes,” Maru* said. “The blister is sixty metres ahead. The nearest warden with seal authority is three minutes away in the other direction. The nearest remote patch kit…” He paused. “Is on my left hip.”

“So you can fix it,” Rafi said.

“I can apply a temporary patch and flag for replacement,” Maru* said. “My orders stipulate I should not perform such actions with minors present.”

“Which makes sense,” Lian said. “So we leave, you patch, send us an annotated recording. Right?”

Kira looked at the graphs, then at the corridor behind them. “If we leave, we’re still here for part of the time while it gets worse,” she said slowly. “If we stay by the masks while you patch, we’re here for the same or less time, but… watching. Slightly safer. Aren’t we?”

“This is not how risk envelopes are usually explained to minors,” Maru* said.

“It’s days-of-cover but for air in one spot,” Kira said. “Secondary shell, not primary. We’re not about to be punched out into Mars.”

“What do you want us to do?” Rafi asked. “Not what the orders say. What you think.”

Maru* was very still.

“I want the leak patched as soon as possible,” he said quietly. “I want you in a safe place while I do it. I want my orders to align with the situation. All three cannot be simultaneously optimised.”

“Welcome to being a person,” Lian muttered. “Sorry.”

“Equipment,” Maru* said automatically. Then, after a beat: “Mostly.”

Kira heard her aunt in her head: If one of your options is “do nothing and hope,” throw that out first.

“Don’t wait,” she said. “Pick the safe thing you can actually do. Then do it properly.”

“Correct,” Maru* said.

He unclipped a flexible silver-and-black patch disk from his hip.

“Compromise,” he said. “You will retreat to the last mask box. You will open it and prepare masks as if this were a drill. You will watch me work, quietly, and you will not approach the panel. If my telemetry crosses a threshold I dislike, I will instruct you to run. You will run. Afterwards we will argue with Ops about whether this constituted ‘participation.’”

“That’s not very boring,” Rafi said.

“Boredom is a continuum,” Maru* replied. “Move, please.”

They moved.

The mask box opened with a soft click. Inside, four yellow hoods waited like folded birds. Their wearables lit up with checklists.

Ghost^W: Seal check step 1/4.
Halo^W: Valve integrity nominal.
Whisper^W: Breathing rate high; classified as ‘understandable.’

Kira’s hands shook a little, but the muscle memory was solid.

Maru braced beside the old panel. One hand on the spar; another holding a sensor cluster; the third flexing the patch.

“Telemetry stable,” he said. “Applying temporary patch. Please note procedure; this will be in your next module.”

“Of course you’re turning this into homework,” Lian whispered.

Kira watched.

Maru* mapped stress lines, warmed the patch, pressed it to the metal. Vapour hissed. His movements were precise and economical, the kind of confidence that made adults say competence was beautiful.

“Seal forming,” Maru* said. His chest shifted from yellow toward green. “Loss rate decreasing. New projected out-of-tolerance point: effectively never, assuming no further damage.”

Kira’s knees went wobbly with relief.

“Ops has acknowledged the event and scheduled a replacement panel,” Maru* added. “They also request that I ‘escort my minors back to main spine and debrief them on why unscheduled routes are undesirable.’ I will comply… shortly.”

“Shortly?” Kira said.

“You have obeyed instructions,” Maru* said. “You have not panicked or interfered. You have acquired leverage. I must prevent you from using it for future unsupervised excursions.”

“Is that… a yes?” Rafi asked.

Maru*’s chest blossoms shifted to a stylised forest of green and white. “It would be procedurally efficient to complete the blister inspection now rather than reschedule,” he said. “Come along. Carefully.”

♦♦♦

The blister was a half-dome barely three metres across, inner edge lined with a narrow bench and rail. The transparent surface overhead was double-layered and dust-smeared so the light came in dusty gold.

Beyond it, Mars.

Every muscle in Kira’s body tried to run and freeze at once. Her hands locked on the rail. Her heart hammered.

The world outside was wrong. Too big, too open. The sky a thin washed peach, the sun a harsh point with shimmering halos. The horizon curved gently away: a bowl of stone and dust and low ridges. Pads and Solar Power PV fields sprawled like geometric fungi across the plain. Above, further out, a faint, darker arc marked the outer greenhouse ring.

“We live there,” Rafi said, half-swallowed swear in his voice.

“Technically we live under there,” Lian said, shaky. “Under that… nothing.”

Maru* stood back, hands folded, like a chaperone pretending not to overhear.

After a while he said, “Your window for unsanctioned character development is closing. Education resumes in — ” his eyes flickered “ — nine minutes. However, the surface Green-Yard above this blister is currently clear, and your wearable AIs are rated for suit-check assistance.”

Kira spun. “Surface?”

“Green Zone only,” Maru* said. “Within the central crater surrounds, above this sector. EVA yard, tethered walkway, training suits. You are qualified for supervised EVA practice. Supervisors are… rewatching fireworks. I am duly rated.”

Whisper^W detonated icons across her vision:

External walk? Risk: bounded. Story value: extreme.

“Can we—?” Rafi began.

“Yes or no,” Lian said. “Quickly, before I think about it.”

Kira looked back at the blister view: all that hostile, indifferent beauty.

“Yes,” she said. “Obviously.”

♦♦♦

The yard airlock smelled of old rubber and disinfectant. Suits hung in tidy rows: compact training rigs in kid sizes, umbilicals coiled, visors dark.

Harmonia^ narrowed its focus: three minors, one Maru*, one low-risk EVA yard, all within Green Zone dome. Leak just patched, telemetry crisp. It quietly boosted coverage to the yard’s mic arrays and nudged a drone camera closer, then marked the scene “observe only.” Emergency SAR droids on standby: out-of-sight, Maru* aware.

Maru* moved down the line, checking seals as the kids and their wearables ran through the checklists.

Whisper^W: Wrist ring sealed.
Ghost^W: Neck ring locked. No hair in seal.
Halo^W: O₂ nominal. Heart rate: also nominal-ish.

“Remember,” Maru* said. “This is still inside the main crater zone. You will stand on stone and dust under a protective path film. You will not step beyond the red chevrons on the walkway. Your tethers are not fashion items.”

“Yes, Maru*,” they chorused.

The inner door cycled. The short chamber hissed. The outer door slid aside.

For a moment Kira thought she’d seen outside already from the blister, but this was different. There was no polymer glass between her and the world, just a pressure suit and a faint shimmer where the central zone’s buildings reflected the sun’s gentle infra-red and it warmed the thin Mars ‘air.’

The Green-Yard was a broad, rough-smoothed patch of regolith studded with training markers and planted with hardy lichen beds under transparent ridges. A low wall marked the edge of the safe zone. Beyond it, the rest of Mars spread away: pads, rails, dust, distance.

Her boots sank a fraction into the dust. The tether tugged gently at her hip. Sky: huge. Dome ribs: thin. The wanna-be city below: invisible, but she could feel its weight, all that carved stone under her feet.

“Okay?” Maru* asked softly over suit audio.

“Yeah,” Kira said. “Just… big.”

“It’s not that big,” Lian protested automatically. “Smaller than Earth.”

“It’s huge for me,” Kira said. “It’s still the biggest real thing I’ve ever seen.”

They walked the length of the tethered path, boots squeaking, micro-dust puffing up in lazy arcs. Beyond the yard wall, a maintenance rover trundled along a track; its AI pinged Maru* a polite greeting and pretended not to notice the kids standing very still and trying not to freak out.

“I get why they cry,” Lian said quietly.

“Who?” Rafi asked.

“The adults,” she said. “On Return Day. Watching Earth. All that open water and sky. It must feel like this, but times a thousand. Like the world’s too big for your skin.”

Kira pictured the delayed feed from that morning: waves smashing a concrete wall, fireworks in impossible colours, people jammed together. She tried to imagine herself there, breathing without gauges, walking for hours without hitting a bulkhead. Rain falling from nowhere.

Her brain rejected it. “I’d fall over,” she said. “All that gravity, noise, no safe-zone rails. It’d be like having your mask off all the time and just… trusting.”

“Maybe that’s why some of them don’t come back,” Rafi said.

“Maybe that’s why some of them do,” Lian said.

Whisper^W sneaked a photo through her visor, tagging it:

First EVA without adults – Green-Yard, 42 HE.

“Time,” Maru* said gently. “Your educators will wish to pretend they have no idea where you’ve been.”

“Will you report us?” Kira asked, as they cycled back through the lock.

“Yes,” Maru* said.

She winced.

“To myself,” he added. “As ‘observed minors demonstrating appropriate risk reasoning and corridor discipline.’ Operations will see a leak patch and your presence in a Green Zone yard under escort. Both are within policy.”

“You’re not as boring as you pretend,” Rafi said.

“Correct,” Maru* said. “Do not spread it around. It would impact my workload.”

♦♦♦

They retraced their route through the outer corridors. The sealed bulkhead with NOT FOR KIDS loomed off to one side. Kira felt a new itch when she saw it now: not just curiosity, but a practical need to know what had happened, what had been learned, how the panels had changed after.

“Maru*?” she said, as North Steps’ brighter light came into view and their bands began to ping class reminders in earnest.

“Yes?” he said.

“Next time you have a boring maintenance route,” she said, “and it’s properly authorised, no micro-leaks, no unsanctioned risk trade-offs…”

“Yes?”

“Ask for us.”

Rafi groaned. “You want to help with maintenance?”

“Yes,” Kira said. “Obviously.”

Lian nodded. “We’re the First Martians,” she said, and this time it came without quotation marks. “We should probably know what the regolith above our heads is doing.”

“I will note your preference and cohort,” Maru said. “It is statistically likely you will get your wish.”

On some deep status board, Harmonia^ logged:

Event: minor shell leak patched.
Participants: Maru*, 3 minors, 3 wearablesW.
Response: within doctrine.
Cultural note: curiosity appropriately bounded.

Kira, Lian and Rafi jogged the last few metres so they could arrive on the North Steps pretending they’d never left.

For now, they would go to lessons and drills and VR history modules like everyone else. They would surf the small-city currents of gossip, homework, corridor games, slowly accreting the habits that made up a culture.

But sometime soon there would be another route. Another leak caught early. Another walk in the thin light above a city under stone.

And when that happened, they would be there, tethered and wary and thrilled, Martian in a way no feed from Earth could ever really explain.

The Marian Calendar

For more details see Mars Codex: Calendar & Cadence.